HONOLULU, October 11—“This is real education!” a professor shouted as a strike-support rally at the University of Hawaii (UH) drew to an end. It truly was. The rally also inspired because it represented the potential for mass worker-student solidarity and an island-wide working-class movement against the evils of capitalism.
About 2,700 workers had been on strike against Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, for three days. Organizers from Unite Here Local 5 got together with faculty and student leaders to hold a strike-support rally in front of university’s School of Travel Industry Management.
Everyone cheered when it was announced that a United Airlines’ flight crew had checked out of Marriott’s Sheraton Princess Kaiulani hotel, and that the International Association of Flight Attendants was supporting the strike. The Sheet Metal Workers and the United Public Workers unions in Hawaii have also taken actions to support the strike.The slogan for the strike is “One job should be enough.” This expresses the feeling that mass poverty among U.S. workers can no longer be tolerated and awareness that only worker rebellion can bring change. Workers shouldn’t need two jobs to survive, but the grim reality is that they do. A Local 5 hotel housekeeper gets $22 per hour. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that it takes more than $35 per hour to afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.
Everyone at the rally voiced enthusiasm for building unity between workers off campus and UH students, teaching assistants, professors and workers. The rally was also the first of its kind at UH. No one could remember a campus rally led by rank-and-file workers.
The following morning, a march of about 200 workers and supporters in Waikiki picketed  in front of Marriott hotels,and ended with a demonstration on the beach next to the giant Moana Surfrider luxury hotel. The speeches and chants were an inspiring show of worker determination to fight for as long as it takes to win the strike.

What is winning?
This raises the question, what does winning mean? The Marriott workers may gain a meaningful wage hike and greater job security. But, as many of the speakers at the strike rallies have been saying, workers throughout the state have been under attack from the bosses for a long time and the working class has suffered defeats as social and environmental problems worsen.
The Marriott struggle must be seen as one part of an ongoing worker’s struggle. For example, on the same day local workers joined the nationwide hotel strike, local postal workers joined a series of nationwide protests against Trump’s latest attack on the working class, a proposal that the postal service be completely privatized. The capitalists are determined to intensify super-exploitation of workers. This means more racist, sexist and anti-immigrant attacks aimed at dividing the working class.
Strikers called for a “fair share” of the massive profits capitalists gain from tourism. Working people should not have to share anything with capitalists. We have to build a communist movement uniting all working people to eliminate capitalism once and for all. Participating in such strikes helps us learn to fight back.
The rallies this week were well organized and spirited, but they weren’t big enough. Mass leafleting in advance might have increased participation. The message that the Marriott workers’ struggle is everyone’s struggle and part of an ongoing anti-capitalist struggle must be brought out forcefully to thousands.

In late September, Meng Hongwei, a Chinese security chief and the president of Interpol, the international police organization, flew to China from his home in France—and disappeared. On October 7, Interpol announced he had resigned his position after a “watchdog” for China’s arch-capitalist “Communist” Party reported online that Meng was “’suspected of violating the law and is currently under the monitoring and investigation’ of China’s new anti-corruption body, the National Supervision Commission” (foxnews.com, 10/7).
As imperialist powers China, the U.S., and Russia prepare for World War III, they need more intense fascism, both to control and attack the working class and to discipline their own ruling classes. With its one-party system and significantly state-owned economy, unconstrained by the charade of electoral “democracy” or presidential term limits, the Chinese rulers have a head start on the rising fascist U.S. bosses—a potential advantage in the global conflict to come.  President Xi Jinping is imposing unity from above in a public crusade against corruption, acts of Small Terrorism (versus the Big Terrorism of the state), and political disagreement. Meng’s arrest sent out a flare that even the Chinese Gestapo is not safe:
The appeal by Meng’s wife for justice and fairness echoed pleas from the families of scores of people who have fallen out favor from the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping’s rule. Some of them might have been pursued by Chinese authorities under Meng’s watch as vice minister for public security.
Such targets, who have been subject to arbitrary detention and made unexplained disappearances, include pro-democracy activists, human rights lawyers, officials accused of graft or political disloyalty and the estimated one million ethnic minority [Uighur] Muslims…. [see CHALLENGE, 9/26].
Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has overseen a harsh crackdown on civil society that is aimed at squelching dissent and activism among lawyers and rights advocates.He has also used a popular and wide-ranging anti-corruption campaign to boost supervision of the party and as a powerful weapon with which to purge his political opponents (foxnews.com, 10/7).
Four days before the news broke on Meng’s fall from grace, world-famous actress Fan Bingbing, the highest-paid celebrity in China, was fined $129 million for tax evasion “and other offences” (bbc.com, 10/3). Xi was sending another message: The rich are expected to contribute their share to China’s war plans and ambitious national projects for global dominance, namely the one Belt and Road infrastructure initiative and Made in China 2025, a bid for supremacy in robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cybersecurity, among other tech sectors. Though U.S. President Donald Trump is imposing tariffs on more than $250 billion in Chinese imports, China has shown no signs of backing down from the escalating trade war or its ambition to be the world’s number-one economy. As Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan noted, “The U.S. should not underestimate China’s resolve and will” (Bloomberg News, 10/9).
China’s rising militarism
One aspect of rising fascism is the funneling of massive resources into military forces and equipment, a prelude to inter-imperialist warfare. In April, China deployed its first ever “Made in China” aircraft carrier. In the last decade alone, it has built more than 100 warships and submarines (Asia Times, 9/10/18).
In taking on the U.S., China’s bosses may choose not to go it alone. Last month, China staged its largest joint military exercise with Russia, which “has the largest [nuclear] arsenal of any country and is investing heavily in the modernization of its [7,000] warheads and delivery systems” (icanw.org]. The exercise coincided with the Eastern Economic Forum attended by Russia, China, and Japan (Economist, 9/6).  
Fasicsm strikes the Internet
According to the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. main-wing bosses’ authoritative publication, “the United States has ceded leadership in cyberspace to China.” While reaping “the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits that once flowed to Washington,” China’s rulers are also molding an Internet “that guides public opinion, supports good governance, and fosters economic growth but also is tightly controlled so as to stymie political mobilization and prevent the flow of information that could undermine the regime.”
One hallmark of fascism is ideological control over information—or disinformation—to serve the nationalist, racist agenda of capitalist bosses in crisis. At the same time, the Internet provides unprecedented power and reach for surveillance of workers and any capitalists who aren’t with the program. As Foreign Affairs notes:
Over the last five years, Beijing has significantly tightened controls on websites and social media. In March 2017, for example, the government told Tencent, the second largest of China’s digital giants, and other Chinese technology companies to shut down websites they hosted that included discussions on history, international affairs, and the military….Officials ordered telecommunications companies to block virtual private networks (VPNs), which are widely used by Chinese businesses, entrepreneurs, and academics to circumvent government censors….Beijing also announced new regulations further limiting online anonymity….
In an even more Orwellian move, authorities have rolled out a sophisticated surveillance system based on a vast array of cameras and sensors, aided by facial and voice recognition software and artificial intelligence. The tool has been deployed most extensively in Xinjiang Province, in an effort to track the Muslim Uighur population there, but the government is working to scale it up nationwide.
Workers in China fight back
Despite the fascist onslaught from the Chinese state, which has fought to bury real communism since the defeat of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, workers are not taking their oppression lying down. In response to a broken system that reserves decent health care for the wealthy, desperate patients and their families are rebelling at hospitals and clinics. Attacks on doctors “are so common that they have a name: ‘yi nao,’ or ‘medical disturbance’” (New York Times, 9/30).
As living and job conditions in China worsen for hundreds of millions of workers, a new surge of student activism is beginning to challenge the fake-left Chinese ruling class. These struggles are bringing together generations of Marxists, showing the potential for an organized communist movement in China.  In Huizhou, a group of recent university students converged from across the country and “attempted to put the party’s stated ideals into action” (NYT, 9/28) by organizing mistreated factory workers.
Carrying portraits of Mao and singing socialist anthems, they espoused the very ideals that the government fed them for years in mandatory ideological classes, voicing grievances about issues like poverty, worker rights and gender equality — some of communism’s core concerns (NYT, 9/28).
As more than 50 activists were arrested for the heresy of putting these ideas into practice, they began singing “The International.” Even in the hostile soil of today’s China, communist ideas will not die. The Progressive Labor Party looks to build our revolutionary organization worldwide. and especially in the face of rising fascism.  Join us!

The appointment of the sexist liar Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court exposes the true nature of a “representative democracy”, a system where workers are excluded from any influence in decision-making. President Trump, who lost the popular vote by over 2 million people, chose the nominee. It was reviewed by the Senate, which has two members from each state regardless of the size of the state. The Supreme Court contains 9 members appointed for life who are the final decision makers for the entire judicial branch. Compare the grip of this tiny number of people over the lives of 300 million workers in the U.S. with the vast opportunity for all workers under communism.
Communism is a system where direct participation by workers is essential; where workers play a continuous active part in every aspect of running society, and where the first obligation of leaders is the development of new leaders, not keeping a grip on power.  What a better world we can build.  
Courts Are Battle Ground Between Capitalist Factions
The courts are part of the bosses’ state apparatus. They exist to give a stamp of approval to the laws that keep the bosses in power over the working class and fill the prisons with our class brothers and sisters. They are also a place where the ruling class fights out their differences. Most Supreme Court cases are disputes over business and banking issues having nothing to do with workers.
Since it has the final say, battles over the make-up of the Supreme Court have occurred throughout U.S. history and always reflect conflicts within the ruling class. Every one of these fights over the court has been between one set of racist murderers versus another.
President Franklin Roosevelt, for example, was frustrated with the Supreme Court in the 1930s.  At that time, the issue was also a split between an isolationist, anti-regulation wing of the ruling class and the then emerging global, imperialist Rockefeller wing. The Rockefeller wing wanted far more regulation of business and banking to hold onto its power. They also needed more control to allow them to make rapid decisions. They anticipated a future of U.S. imperialism launching wars across the globe. The Rockefeller wing won and held power for over 60 years.
The modern battle over control of the Supreme Court began in 1982 with the formation of the Federalist Society. (NPR 6/28/18) This group of extremely conservative and libertarian lawyers and judges has grown into a forceful voice supporting the interests of the domestic section of the ruling class (see CD Editorial 9/24). That wing has targeted control of the judiciary as a strategy for competing with the larger more entrenched main wing capitalists (NPR 3/14/18).
These domestically oriented bosses wish to cut the size of the federal government, slash all regulations, and pass a huge tax cut for the rich. The 91 judges Trump has nominated came from a list prepared by the Federalist Society (Chicago Tribune Oct. 2018). The Federalist Society now dominates large sections of the federal courts. With the Kavanaugh appointment they are now the dominant section of the Supreme Court.
The main wing of the ruling class is equally aware of the need to control the Supreme Court to try to hold onto their dying empire. During Obama’s first term there was an effort urging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire so she could be replaced by a younger person. She refused (The New Yorker Sept. 2018). Ginsberg, a liberal media icon, is herself a big racist who won’t hire Black law clerks (National Law Journal 2/1) and publicly attacked Colin Kapernick for kneeling (NY Times 10/11).
Then in early 2016, Justice Scalia, a member of the Federalist Society, died suddenly. Obama had his chance. He nominated Merrick Garland, but the Republicans refused to hold hearings to appoint him. The seat was saved til after the 2016 presidential election and the choice went to Trump.
The bosses obviously won’t say that they are fighting to control the courts to keep themselves in power. Instead they cynically use our hatred of sexism and racism to try to get us to fight their battles. When it appeared that Kavanaugh was sure to be appointed, the Democrats revealed the name of Christine Blasey Ford who credibly accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault and unleashed the honest passion of millions of anti-sexists to take Kavanaugh down. This was a corrupt ploy on their part.  These same liberal Democrats defended the serial sexual predator President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. They launched vicious attacks against the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and several other women who had been abused by Clinton. Well known feminists of that time, like Gloria Steinem (The Atlantic 11/13/17) and women politicians like Maxine Waters (House of Representatives 12/18/98), openly defended Clinton just like Trump defended Kavanaugh.
In 1991 President George H. W. Bush nominated Judge Clarence Thomas, the most conservative of all the Justices, because he felt he needed a Black man. During those Senate hearings Anita Hill reported being sexually harassed by Thomas. It was two liberal Democrats, then Senator Joe Biden and Senator Ted Kennedy, who led the vicious, sexist attack against her. Just as with Kavanaugh, the woman was traumatized and the nominee became a Supreme Court Justice.
Don’t vote!—organize against sexism!
Brett Kavanaugh is a horrific sexist. But voting for the corrupt liberalism of the Democrats will not stop sexism. Only women and men workers fighting side by side against the bosses’ sexist division of the working class and the capitalist system that breeds it will lead to equality. Capitalism is steeped in sexist culture as we saw daily in the defenses of Kavanaugh and the Democrats exploitation of sexual assault victims. Sexist culture supports the capitalist profit generated by the gender wage gap, the super-exploitation of women and the added burdens they take on as mothers and caregivers.The Democrats are loyal to the same capitalist system as the Republicans. None are friends of workers.

NEW JERSEY—Led by undocumented workers and youth, 200 protesters demanded what governor Phil Murphy had promised last year but (like the racist opportunist he is) never delivered: the basic access to drivers’ licenses. This protest exposed the hollowness of liberal politics and the potential for a workers’ movement with international communist influence. Progressive Labor Party fights for the idea that a system that uses borders, a ruling-class creation, to rob and terrorize workers deserves to be abolished.
Racist Murphy had preyed on the legal capitalist-created torment of undocumented workers and youth. He had made the point of licenses for the undocumented working class a part of his election campaign; today 500,000 in New Jersey alone still live under the threat of deportation every time they are stopped by the police for driving while undocumented. These workers refused to accept Murphy’s lies.
A PL’er talked  about their experience of crossing from Mexico into the U.S with their family, highlighting the repressive nature of the U.S. border patrol. They finished with the chant “Las Luchas Obreras, No Tienen Fronteras!/The Fight Of The Workers, It Has No Racist Borders!” The hundreds of workers present embraced the chant.
Working inside the Cosecha Movement
The march, organized by the Cosecha Movement, gathered workers from ten cities in Columbus Park, in the city of Trenton. From there we marched from this mostly Black, Latin, and Asian  neighborhood to where the politicians have their offices. This is the fourth and largest march that the Cosecha Movement has organized in Trenton since January, 2018, and shows the determination of the workers to escalate our fight against the capitalists and their state government to win this much needed reform!
Workers have drive for mass antiracist movement
Cosecha is a national U.S. grassroots organization that is coordinating reform campaigns around the needs of undocumented workers. The organization hopes to win workers to eventually unite around a nation-wide strike to achieve citizenship reform, which many workers believe will provide them with permanent protection from racist deportation.Marches are growing in numbers, with collective leadership. For this march, more families with children from more cities came. Taking inspiration from what a small but militant group of workers from New Brunswick contributed to the last march, more youth participated in preparation for and during the march and rally. Workers in each of the different cities made and sold traditional tacos, coordinated local festivals, partnered with various cultural events, organized yard sales, donated clothing, and held countless gatherings in homes and churches from June to September to raise funds.
These organizing activities encouraged new workers to come with us. And with the funds raised from these activities, we acquired six buses for workers from the different cities to converge at the rally in Trenton.
Politicians turn away workers, workers turn towards CHALLENGE
At one stop along the march, a mother gave a compelling speech: “Today I, because of [drivers’ licenses] I am here, because my son needs treatment and I have to travel to another state. I want all of you to grow conscious that this is a need. Not for luxury. Because it is a necessity.”
When we finally arrived at the state house, some politicians walked past and ignored the rally., and workers began chanting, and jeering at them.
The workers’ decision to take to the streets is a political victory - a literal step forward. In turning to the masses and youth in preparing for the struggle, the workers built the confidence to physically assert their growing power on the streets. And yet this is only a glimpse of what a small group of construction, agricultural, cleaning, household, factory, and professional workers, undocumented, documented, and citizen workers are able to collectively achieve.
Along the way, more than 400 CHALLENGEs in English and Spanish were sold or distributed, along with a pamphlet about the need to read and engage in discussion about solidarity with other workers’ struggles, including the need to smash racist borders.
Getting on the road to revolution
The exposure to communist ideas in CHALLENGE is key. No laws or politicians, or even a nationwide strike like Cosecha calls for, can provide “permanent protection” and/ or end the anti-immigrant racism capitalism relies on, no matter how many millions of workers might support it. Workers live in a dictatorship of capitalism- what reforms we do win are ultimately taken back when it suits the capitalists. However, when communists participate in these mass reform movements, which attract other strong working class fighters, these relationships can powerfully develop class consciousness.
Workers united across the world as a class by one party - PLP - are capable of transforming these energies for reform into a revolution for workers’ power. We do it by struggling for these reforms while introducing communist politics to the workers we meet, and showing the futility of attempting to reform capitalism.
Liberalism: main danger to working class
Liberal politicians, on the other hand, attempt to deceive workers into believing capitalism can be reformed, while channeling their struggles into the opposite direction- support for one or another sector of the genocidal, imperialist U.S. ruling class.
In 2009, liberal Deporter-In-Chief Barack Obama failed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, which he promised within his first 100 days in office. Militant reform struggles led by “Dreamers” - undocumented youth fighting for access to higher education - began exposing Obama’s hypocrisy and empty promises.
By April 2011, Obama’s approval rating suffered drastically among Latin workers (Gallup 12/2014).
In June 2012, Obama signed into law the immigration executive order Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
By the end of 2014, the nature of liberals like Obama’s service to the bosses’ increasingly fascist system was even clearer. While breaking deportation records, Obama’s administration illegally awarded a one billion dollar contract to Corretions
Corporation of America (now known as  CoreCivic) “to build a massive detention facility for [immigrant] women and children seeking asylum...In 2015, the first full year [of the contract], CCA — which operates 74 facilities — made fourteen percent of its revenue from that one center while recording record profit” (America’s Voice, 10/12).
Today, the declining U.S. imperialist bosses’ reliance on the private prison industry continues to grow while the bosses’ latest mouthpiece, Donald Trump, has terminated DACA.
While the bosses’ plans for undocumented youth in the U.S. are unclear at the moment, communists in PLP will continue to learn from, struggle with, and forge international fightback by bringing workers together from across Cosecha and other movements, and continue to advocate our own plans and fight for nothing less than workers power - communist revolution!